The Kingwin EZ-Dock 2 comes with instruction manual, driver CD for Windows 98, power supply and A-B USB cable. The unit has a wide base with two drive slots oriented front-to-back. The slot guides that help orient the 2½" drives are spring-loaded, and depress into the base when inserting a 3½" drive. The rear houses the USB port, three dip switches for selecting the RAID level, and the power jack and on/off switch. A knockout panel that appears to be possibly for an eSATA port is left blank; the EZ-Dock 2 only supports USB connections.

The EZ-Dock 2 will accept any 2½" or 3½" SATA I or II hard drive, and can in fact mix and match drive sizes and capacities. To exemplify this feature, we'll be testing with a Western Digital Caviar 1TB 3½" drive and a Toshiba 80GB 2½" drive. While the WD Caviar 1TB drive we recently reviewed represents one of the latest in hard drive technology, the Toshiba unit is an older and slower 5400RPM model. Both drives are easily inserted into the EZ-Dock 2 slots, and the guide ensures that the smaller drive is correctly aligned in the slot for the SATA connectors to mesh.

The last step before powering on the unit is to set the RAID level using the dip switches on the rear of the base. Although the manual lists switch settings for RAID0, RAID1, etc. "for computers with RAID function" it appears that only the first two listed, BIG (SPANNING) and JBOD appear to work. Setting the switches in any other position resulted in no lights, not even the power indicator, when turned on. With either BIG or JBOD set however, the unit powers on and flashes activity for the corresponding drive being accessed.